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Myself, not a big Argento fan. But this is an interesting case. The niche fans of the original will scream to the heavens of sacrilege since Argento is considered an 'artist', so you are going to lose them, and unless they go completely away from the tone/style of the original it's not scary enough or hip enough to get on a younger crowds radar. Should be real interesting to see just where this ends up on the scale of 1 to failure.

Amazing physical actor and the closest living thing to the classic horror movie-type actors of the past. Just watch Pan's Labyrinth/Hellboy for examples. If there is going to be a new Frankenstein it HAS to be DelToro and Doug Jones...add in designs based on Berni Wrightson's art and I think I just popped an embolism in my synapses...

Hey Kingsqueen...this as well as Cabin in the Woods start Friday. Only thing, movietickets.com had Detention playing solely @ the Burbank Media Center 6 as of Sunday(past). Hopefully it isn't exclusive to that theater. Regardless, despite the presence of Dane Cook in it we have to see this and Cabin this weekend. Mandatory.

Great weekend for 'R' rated horror with this and DETENTION(in very limited release). Both are supposed to be extremely smart Scream-like deconstructions of horror flicks. Planning on seeing both(and maybe 3 Stooges) this weekend so I will give you my what-fer as soon as I do.

Laced with absurd asides, enormously self aware humor and arguably stuffed with a few more ideas and images than it's quite sure what to do with, Joseph Kahn's Detention is Donnie Darko for the ADD set. A film that riffs equally on John Hughes and John Carpenter it intertwines the angsty, postmodern teen comedy with slasher and scifi elements and then ramps the speed of it all up to a dizzying pace. Call it what you will, but it's certainly never boring.

Shanley Caswell stars as Riley Jones, high school outsider. Riley is a girl without a place in the high school social ladder. Or, at least, a girl without a cool place. Not attractive enough to be one of the cool girls. Not sporty enough to fit in with that crowd. She's a bit awkward, a bit clumsy, a bit too smart for her own good, and she can't even win at Debate Club anymore thanks to the perversely convincing arguments of the visiting Canadian exchange student. She's also in love with Clapton Davis (Josh Hutcherson) who is, in turn, smitten with vapid cheerleader Ione. Thus Riley wants to die.

At least she thinks she wants to die. But that's before the arrival of an actual, honest to god, movie slasher killer on the scene who is all too willing to help her along to her bloody end. Then the prospect becomes significantly less appealing.

Produced purely independently on a tiny budget by writer-director Joseph Kahn (Torque), Detention is one of those 'Why stop with the kitchen sink?' sorts of movies, one that jams absolutely everything possible into its slender running time. And while some aspects certainly work better than others it's to Kahn's credit that he manages to maintain the hyper kinetic pace and bizarre logic in which elements lifted straight from Disney teen classics, The Breakfast Club, and the work of David Cronenberg nuzzle up to a teen romance and a time hopping plot to end the world and it all actually makes sense.

An awful lot of what works has to do with the young cast, with Caswell and Hutcherson proving to be an immensely likable and believable couple in the middle of all the madness. The young pair ground the film just enough to keep it from all spinning off out of control. And, beyond them, marks also go to Kahn for actually making Dane Cook funny again. Surely I'm not the only one who felt that particular task was verging on impossible.

In many ways Detention strikes me as a film that will play like Repo: The Genetic Opera. It will polarize, inspiring an intense loyalty amongst the audience it was created for while also triggering a great deal of venom from a good portion of those outside that audience. There isn't going to be a lot of in between on this one

you wanted a thumbnail on Detention Kingsqueen...here ya go. Everyone else, this is only playing at the AMC burbank.

2 minutes into Detention I sat baffled; no idea what I was looking at.

5 minutes in I still didn’t know what I was looking at but I was in love with it.

10 minutes in my brain started to hurt.

20 minutes in I decided the film was genius.

30 minutes in I fell into a trance.

60 minutes in I desperately wanted the film to end, to release me from its manic and unabating exuberance.

89 minutes in the film ended. And I was sad. It had done something to me, and I craved more.

It is now days later and my brain is still reeling from Detention. I’m not entirely sure exactly what this movie is — is it a brilliant masterwork of controlled madness, or a hollow piece of meta confection that replaces substance with filmmaking artifice? I may never decided. But I am confident of two things: 1) This may be the weirdest movie I’ve ever seen that was made by a professional and successful director. And 2) If you view movies as an artform and not simply as an un-challenging avenue of entertainment, then you have to see it. This is definitely my “must see even if you hate it” film of 2012.

the humor, and the slow, deliberate development of the film’s unique concept — both succeed by virtue of a common characteristic of every part of the script: razor-sharp wit. Not a scene, character, joke, or plot development of The Cabin In The Woods fails to move things along in an exceptionally clever way, each feeling as inevitable as it does unexpected. This wit extends to the filmmakers’ understanding and exploitation of horror tools and techniques. This movie is through and through a horror film, even when it is adding additional layers on top of the horror. At the nuts and bolts level, these guys know how to capture violence effectively and give you a good jump-scare when called for. They also understand horror structure and the need for delicate escalation- nothing drives a good horror flick like momentum. Finally, they understand the history and context of horror, the paramount importance of which will become more clear to you as the story progresses.

That is perhaps the vaguest collection of accolades possible for a film that bears so much interesting discussion, but there will come a time for that once everyone has had an opportunity to see The Cabin In The Woods. Until then, just trust me that this movie is already a classic right this instant, and that any fan of horror films on any level will love it. In fact, you shouldn’t read anything more about it, including this review! So basically this boils down to…

Shut up. Tell your friends to shut up. See The Cabin In The Woods. Shut up again.

I will have to see Detention 2 or 3 more times because, at one point, it became so dense with ideas flying out of nowhere, that it was all I could do to keep up...much less judge. Initial reaction, the guy who said Donnie Darko + ADD was close...just add Breakfast Club and (Kingsqueen said) Clueless and you get at least a glimmer of what this is like. Initial reaction is that you should see it simply because it's so creative and tries so hard to challenge that it should be rewarded.

on the other hand

This is one of those movies that is just so smart that if you were a budding writer you would cry and then find something else to do. I cannot tell you how great this is...or anything about it. I think the commercials already give away too much and the opening credits give away a WHOLE lot more...but damn this movie is just so solid. Not sure if time/money ran out because there is some SyFy network type cgi towards the end, but some real nice practical work takes the edge off of that. There is just so much going on at that point(trust me, you will know what I am talking about when the part of the movie comes) that maybe they just had no choice to cgi simply because of the immense amount of STUFF on the screen. A recurring nightmare of my youth was triggered by this movie and chances are at least one of yours will be. AND...for once...an ending that isn't afraid to take things to their logical progression. This joins The Grey as my fave movies of the year. You NEED to go see this. Support original ideas, support R rated horror. And Doc Naysay...your boy Bradley Whitford is in this...and he's real good.